Archive of Our Own

"Oi! You listenin', jackass?" Burning ambers pierce the researcher's wrinkled eyes, which were well past a low lid and practically shut by now. "If I'm so goddamn boring for you, I can make myself scarce."

It had been a few months now since Tachyon had made that discovery. Since she'd had the revelation she so deeply sought after.

The very same that ruined her.

"P-Please, please." A drooping, oversized sleeve hides the dismissively waving hand beneath it. Her body languidly shifts, as if the uncrossing of her legs and the slight teetering back in her chair was sufficient proof that she was awake, though they did little to serve against her flat expression. "You needn't shout. I can hear you perfectly clearly." Which was true. She could hear Jungle Pocket just fine. But the words themselves, the sentiments... All blurred dissonance to a mind that so desperately craved something that it could never have. Terminology reminiscent of high velocity movement. Words that encompassed the rush of adrenaline into the body. Mere mentions of shoes hitting the turf.

Jungle Pocket couldn't have known how much these tales of subsequent races stung her. It wasn't her fault. She couldn't be blamed for something that Tachyon had so relentlessly pushed her towards. In pursuit of discovery, one rarely considered consequences, but never once had Tachyon considered just how deep a cut it would be to see Pokke finally barreling towards the finish line...

All while being unable to run alongside her.

"Well, ya sure have a funny way of showing it." Pokke gives chase with a scoot of her ass and a dragging of her own chair forward, only to lean up and out of it anyway to start encroaching on Tachyon's space. "The hell's up with you lately? You used to ask me all sorts of weirdo questions." Her poor, high-pitched impression comes with her hands limply flailing around to imitate Tachyon's sleeves, as well as a thin, silly grin that spanned both of her cheeks.

"How would you describe your sweat, Pokke?"
"What are you fixating on as you run, Pokke?"
"Could I scrape a few samples off your boxers, Pokke?"
"Are your legs affected by a simmer tree, Pokke?"

Before she could fire off another taunt, Tachyon's hand emerges from her coat, pressing a single finger against Pokke's mouth.

"Asymmetry." She'd correct, with a strained grin curling into her crooked lips.

The finger drops, dragging down her lower lip before settling at the chin, holding it steady to command her attention. Her gaze doesn't meet Pokke's, but hovers somewhere past her shoulder, heavy-lidded and dull.

"A lack of perfect balance." She murmurs. "The slightest tilt of the pelvis. A leg that underperforms next to its counterpart. Something imperceptible to the untrained eye until the miles start piling on."

Her free hand rises now, this time sketching a faint, shaky line through the air between them. A jagged path that ultimately nosedives. "Over time, that seemingly miniscule difference becomes pain. Strain. A misalignment that can't be run through forever. The body compensates... until it can't."

Tachyon's voice flattens, trailing at the edges and lacking that usual bravado of hers. It can't. She couldn't. Not anymore. The sentiment echoes in her mind for the full duration of her pause after that remark.

"And by then, the faster one half tries to go, the more the other half falls behind."

Only now does her gaze return to Jungle Pocket, and her crooked smile twitches just once more - fond, but tired. A tinge of something vulnerable. "It fascinates me still, you know. The way a system pulls itself apart while trying to go forward."

It was a colorful, flowery, indirect way of explaining her behavior up until that point. Naturally, that only managed to piss off Jungle Pocket.

"The hell are you saying, huh?"
She'd wrest out of the other's hold on her, shooting her arms out to hold up Tachyon's wrists near the sides of her head. Per usual, this aggressive behavior was met with complete stillness, but most alarming to Jungle Pocket was the dimmed color in Tachyon's eyes. That lack of spark. Gone was that endlessly agitating, probing look that she'd give her, as if she was always right where she wanted to be, waiting to see what ways this guinea pig would squeal this time.

And, naturally, this managed to piss off Jungle Pocket even more.

Her teeth grit into a harsh scowl. Her nails dig into Tachyon's wrists hard enough to leave marks. Yet - there is only stillness from her hostage.

"Talkin' like you've already been taken out back... The hell's wrong with you?! Curled up in that damn chair, watching the world go by... Is that really how you wanna fuckin' die? Huh?"

Pokke was never given the full scope. Tachyon was rarely transparent about that sort of thing. She knew well enough that all these invasive questions and experiments were in service of pushing an uncooperative body along, but she'd never imagined that this ran quite so deep.

"ANSWER ME, TACHYON!"

The distance between them had been widening more with every passing day and she'd never even known it. But that didn't mean she wouldn't try to grab onto it. To her.

"What do you want me to say, Jungle Pocket? That I've a choice in the matter?" Expectedly, her cheshire grin remains entirely intact, even as welts were beginning to form on her wrists. "I'm observing. That's what I do. All I can do. I push the limits so that others like you can keep running and chasing checkered flags in my stead."

Spoken like a woman who was trying as hard to convince herself of that fact as much as she was trying to convince her cohort.

"Besides... It's a comfortable chair! Aha.~ You'd understand if you had a chair like this. Ergonomic design, ideal lumbar support, and perfectly positioned accommodations for the tail - all factors aligning to create the pinnacle of-"

That was about as much as Pokke could take.

All at once with a frustrated wail, Tachyon is lifted out of that chair with a pull on her arms and a harsh kick at the wheels, sending the wide-eyed scientist to the floor with her captor tumbling down after her. Their intertwined bodies knock into a neighboring bookshelf, which erupts in a cascade of fluttering papers and journals, some raining down on Jungle Pocket's back while others clattered to the ground around Tachyon's head.

Tachyon's breath catches as her back hits the ground. The sterile calm in her eyes wavers, replaced by a flicker of something raw and unguarded. Pokke looms above her on all fours, eyes flitting between logs of races recorded in ink-stained pages and anatomical diagrams scrawled in Tachyon's precise handwriting - laid out before them was a full spread of their shared history.

Laid out before them was reality.

Days into weeks into months. More time than Jungle Pocket could comprehend was sprawled out on the ground. Countless attempts all arriving at the same conclusion. Each stricken hypothesis on every new list serving as another blow to her gut. The same logical, irrefutable conclusion that left no room for debate.

In the center of it all was Tachyon, once again smiling - laughing, now - with the corners of her deeply fatigued eyes starting to glisten as she cackled until her lungs ran dry. Laughing at Pokke. At herself. At the futility of her efforts. At everything.

And when she settled, her head knocks once against the wood beneath her. Her hands fall coldly to the sides of her head, dragging Pokke's shackling fingers on her wrists down with them.

"Do you get it now... Jungle Pocket? Do you understand?"

Tachyon's eyes roll up to the ceiling, staring straight through it and into the endless night above them.

"There's nothing more to be done about it. Because I've done everything there is."

The tired rasp at the edges of her voice were more apparent now. Her baggy eyes narrowed, laying bare her exhaustion in full.

"It's not a matter of resilience. Not endurance. Not willpower. Just... limits. And I've determined mine."

Her gaze is unblinking, as if she were searching for something in the space beyond the ceiling - some elusive variable she hadn't accounted for. But as she fails to find it, her eyes flit shut and she lays there, swallowing the circumstances, presuming them airtight and unable to be argued.

And then, Pokke says it.

"You look awfully fucking happy for someone breaking a promise."

The scratching accusation snaps Tachyon's eyes open wide. Her breath catches in her throat and then, only then, does that self-satisfied smile finally crack. Her brow twitches, not enough for a flinch, but enough to show the tremors under the surface as her gaze finally rolls back down, meeting Jungle Pocket head on.

"...Promise?" she whispers, in a tone so soft that it blurred the line between defensive and incredulous.

But she knew. Of course she knew.

Pokke leans in, eyes narrowed, anger softening just slightly into something wounded.

"The one you made when you told me you'd run with me one day. Not from the sidelines. Not from your lab. Not like this."

Tachyon's lips part but no rebuttal comes. Just that look, that split-second collapse of her entire internal structure. A concept so esoteric and volatile as a promise and one's capacity to hold it was a ridiculous thing, really - regardless of one's intentions or capability, any number of outside, unforeseen circumstances could impede even the most innocuous agreements.

And yet, she'd made one anyway. How silly. How...

"Selfish." Came her voice finally, trembling and dry. "That's what you are. A selfish, short-sighted little beast."

The quiet is disturbed by Pokke's grip reinforcing itself, firmly slamming Tachyon's wrists against the ground again. Craning her head forward with a sharp, shuddering exhale that'd roll down her spine, Pokke's lips come up right against her cheek, breathing her reply right against Tachyon's jawline.

"Never said I wasn't."

Tachyon turns slowly beneath her, pivoting just enough to meet Pokke head on, and in that motion, their lips brush. Not a kiss - just a volatile spark, a ghost of contact from position rather than intention, lingering like static all the same. And for a moment, their eyes meet, and neither says a word. The moment, this closeness, all they'd said to each other and everything they felt, all kept close to the chest as they linger in the silence.

"Fortunately." Her voice is hot and harsh. Every syllable is palpable against Pokke's face. "Beasts are easier to tame than one might think."

Implications are allowed to settle and take root as she watches Pokke's eyes for dilation, minding the rising and falling of her chest for changes in breathing.

"You identify the drive first. Hunger, contact, loyalty, sex - Doesn't matter."

Her knee shifts - slow, deliberate - pressing lightly into the tension at Pokke's hips, slowly grinding along her groin. Just enough friction to cloud the mind.

"Then comes stimulus."

Pokke's nostrils flare with a harsh exhale, fingers digging in hard to Tachyon's wrists. Every part of her fights to stay still. Every part of her already knows what's happening.

"Positive reinforcement yields compliance."

Stiff, simple juts of her knee become deliberate rolls along the length of the outline in those tight little shorts. Top to bottom and back again, with mental notes made for every swell and twitch in response.

"Negative reinforcement yields desperation."

Spoken just as she elects to cease all motion entirely, which draws a guttural, frustrated groan out of the squirming specimen above her.

"Give them what they want." Tachyon watches intently. Not cruel or smug. Simple and straightforward. A scientist running a test with a known outcome. "But only just enough. And they'll come back. Over and over. Hoping this time will be different."

Pokke's jaw tenses. Her response is growled through gnashing teeth.

"You think that's what this is?"

Tachyon doesn't answer right away. Her other knee joins its twin in curling inward before they both spread apart, wordlessly inviting that looming presence to take advantage of the vulnerable position. To do away with her oh-so thin leggings, all at the cost of this conversation.

"I think." She retorts, with the detachment of someone already filing her own emotions elsewhere for later, "That you're still here."

And Pokke was. With her breath catching and her muscles taut and her heart hammering so loud she was sure Tachyon could hear it.

Still here. Still wanting. Still chasing after Tachyon, even now.

And somehow, Tachyon was still managing to outrun her.

"Desire." Her knees bracket Pokke's hips, her hands - still pinned - twitch faintly in her grasp. "A predictable vector. Enacted upon intermittently, it encourages compliance."

Jungle Pocket doesn't respond. Her head bows slightly, curling and shifting with the rhythm of her breath. Shallow. Irregular. Her grip on Tachyon's wrists is bruising.

"Rewards are anticipated. Behavior can be adjusted."

Everything is dissected in those deep, red eyes. The flinch of her brows. The sweat pooling on her collarbone. Every shift in posture is logged, weighed, understood.

"Brilliant deduction there. People like having their junk touched. You figure that one out while you were rotting away in here?" Pokke mutters, her voice low, thick, contempt barely managing to pull ahead of lust long enough for her to speak. "Wouldn't surprise me if you've been wasting all your time filling out these notebooks with all the stupid ways you could break someone."

"No." Tachyon interjects. Not defensive, just specifying. "Not breaking. Adjusting."

Her hips shift forward slightly, applying pressure to the space between them. Enough to draw a staggered inhale from Pokke that borders on choking.

"You aren’t broken, Jungle Pocket. You're consistent. Driven by the prospect of results. And that's why I like you."

Pokke lifts her head finally, snarling settling to a dry gasp. A dying fire on its last legs. "You think I like coming back to you when you're like this?"

"I think you do. Even now."

And she was right. Pokke's thighs shake. Her knuckles pale around the wrists they cling to like a lifeline. She could walk away from this. She could reclaim control and wriggle out of this longwinded analogy right now if she wanted to and avoid every thought in her mind that demanded satisfaction for every carnal urge bubbling up in her chest. 'I could...'

"You could." Tachyon's voice comes like the gates slamming open, scattering Pokke's thoughts. As if she'd read her mind the moment she'd thought of it. "But you won't."

She doesn't smile. Doesn't taunt. Her gaze remains steady.

"You'd like to feel justified. You want me to make you do it."

Her words are sterile and absent of emotion, but the breathing beneath them is not. It hitches slightly - just once - as Pokke's grip shifts, sliding from her wrist to her forearm, the tips of her fingers trembling.

"You want to be cornered. You want there to be no choice but retaliation."

Her thighs press inward again, almost cradling Pokke between them. Not forceful. Possessive. Explicit permission. Open invitation.

"You want me to tell you that it's okay."

Pokke doesn't move. Her chest tightens. Her breath staggers and her capacity for coherent thought has all but failed.

Tachyon leans up, just slightly. Close enough to feel the warmth of her breath. Close enough that her words brush Pokke's lips.

"It isn't. But you don't need it to be."

Then silence. A challenge masked as truth. A simple acknowledgement of the fact that Pokke was holding back out of fear that giving in would prove Tachyon right. That it would absolve Tachyon of having to address that she'd given up.

That's what finally breaks her.

Pokke growls low in her throat - a warning, a plea, a desperate cry, even she doesn't know which - and shoves Tachyon against the floorboards beneath them, hips pinning her down with force she can't justify anymore as defiance. Her hands dive beneath the hemming of Tachyon's sweater and straight to her leggings, splitting them open from the middle and exposing as much skin as she possibly could. Seeking warmth, flesh, anything, only satisfied once she could see her target clearly.

Tachyon exhales softly. Expectantly. The desired outcome had been achieved.

"As predicted."

Pokke crashes down to silence her, enacting on the frustration of each time prior their lips had bumped together with a desperate, wild, clumsy mashing of their mouths. Lips seal and tongues flick and intertwine, alternating between lashing, entangling and suckling on occasion, any means necessary of mixing their saliva together, all while Jungle Pocket yanked her shorts down with her thumbs, dragging them down to her knees before getting too frustrated to bother pulling at them any further.

She doesn't stop to think. Doesn't care about grace or rhythm or proper form. Her only priority is to make up for all the time wasted on the edge of restraint. She grinds herself against Tachyon with a force that borders on punishment, trying to press her into the floor as if hoping to leave a mark there. Her length eagerly swells to full mast with a few humping motions, smearing the scent of sweat and stamina training all over Tachyon's groin with every new bump together.

Every kiss, every micro adjustment of their bodies shifting against each other, every clumsy grope or pull at her is accepted with a deep sigh into their suffocating kisses, tinged with a faint hum that sounded all too pleased. No further guidance or coaxing is given - Pokke is given full rein, Tachyon even tilting her head up to meet her halfway, allowing more access, encouraging more exploration.

That only spurs Pokke further.

After prying apart from Tachyon with a wet pop, Pokke paves a path along her jawline, desperate and hungry, trailing kisses that are more teeth than tongue until she finds the crook of her neck and fastens there. Her hands fumble between them, sleek with adrenaline and intent. She pushes the sweater up and up until it's bunched uselessly beneath Tachyon's arms.

"Stop looking at me like that." Pokke snarls against her throat, voice shaking, half-wrecked. "Like you knew I'd do this. Like you wanted me to-"

"I did." Tachyon says, soft as usual. Still infuriatingly calm.

It makes Pokke shudder. Rage and desire caught in the same breath. She withdraws just enough to look at her, face flushed and enraged with the fact that her chest was tight in a way that had nothing to do with exertion.

"Then say it. Say you gave up."

Tachyon's eyes flicker briefly, but her expression doesn't change.

"I stopped running."

Pokke's mouth opens but words fail to form. It's not the answer she wanted. It's not one she knows what to do with.

She kisses her again instead. Harder. Rougher. Like she could disprove all of Tachyon's doubts with pressure alone. As if she took enough from her, she could find some trace of the cowardice buried beneath that infuriating nonchalance.

But all she finds is heat.

Willingness.

Tachyon parts her legs just wider beneath her, and Pokke doesn't hesitate. Doesn't flinch. Pokke's fingers slide down to take hold on the base of her shaft, guided by instinct over experience. She knows well enough what to do. She'd known every night she'd left that lab with an uncomfortable lump in her shorts. Every night she'd spent cursing her imagination.

And now, she wasn't imagining.

Now, she was in control.

Now she's...

"Fuck."

An apt way of putting it. That initial breach of boundary makes the both of them shudder in unison. But Pokke was well beyond any capacity for restraint. Thankfully, Tachyon was well beyond any attempt at pretending this situation hadn't aroused her in the slightest.

A few shallow thrusts and saws of her hips is all it takes for Pokke to push her groin flush with Tachyon's, bottoming out with a groan that'd rattle the bookshelves around them, loosing a few books more from the edges and sending them tumbling to the floor. Shallow breaths roll in and out of the pair in tandem. One trembling exhale from Pokke for every steadying inhale from Tachyon.

It isn't long before, wordlessly, they begin to move again.

Each buck of Pokke’s hips is a call, each recoil from beneath her a response.

Tachyon takes it all with fleeting efforts at remaining rigid to insist on her control over the situation, but her thighs twitch, her breath hastens. Feedback loops build tension. She braces herself as if to measure impact, spine arching slightly, letting friction collect and surge across her body.

From here, momentum takes hold. Mass meets velocity, meets resistance, meets give. The repeated creak of the floorboards beneath them serves as an uneasy metronome. Sweat accumulating on skin makes every collision audible, with the sound of sexes crashing into each other only matched by the steady rise of grunts and moans.

Acceleration follows, as Pokke's undying passion for the uma beneath her intertwines with her boiling frustration. Her eyes held shut as she struggled one last time to try and place it. What was she doing it for at this point? What did it prove? What excuse would justify succumbing so easily to her own depravity like this?

With Tachyon's wrists long since freed as Pokke had braced her palms against the floor at her sides, an answer comes to Pokke in the form of nails digging beneath her shirt and raking down her back, firmly enough to leave jagged streaks along the length of her spine. As the sting of this possessive gesture hits her, she's met with Tachyon's red eyes staring right back up at her. It hits her all at once - what Tachyon had been saying earlier, how it all felt - everything.

This... whatever it was, it didn't need to be perfect. It would never be. And that was fine.

The only thing Pokke needed to justify this moment was the desperation in Tachyon's eyes as she clung to her. The way she held tight, abandoning all pretense of restraint in favor of wordlessly laying her underlying emotions bare. As if breakneck exchanges like this were the only way she thought she'd ever be able to catch up to Pokke, the only way she'd ever be able to catch up to her silhouette barreling over the horizon.

The only way she could keep Jungle Pocket from outrunning her for good.

The expression on Tachyon's face was so unnatural to Pokke that the woman beneath her, rattling and buckling beneath every labored thrust was near unrecognizable. A pathetic, desperate, wrinkled thing. Longing openly written on her crooked lips and her tilted brows.

Most telling of all were those embarrassing, watering eyes. Pokke would feel the corners of her vision start to blur as she soon followed suit.

"I never..." Tachyon's voice barely treads above a whimper. A breathless, staggered gasp. "I never wanted to stop..."

"Shut up."

Pokke's voice, meanwhile, is snarled through gritted teeth against Tachyon’s windpipe, which she bites down on, either to shut her up or just feel her pulse against her teeth. This invokes a surge of energy throughout the rest of her, with rhythmic thrusts becoming more erratic, desperate whips of her hips.

Turns out, even after all that prodding, the very thought of hearing Tachyon properly admit that she'd given up pissed her off most of all.

The tension on her throat drives Tachyon's eyes into the back of her head. A responsive flinch holds Pokke taut in place, arms at her back and thighs clenching the other's waist alike. A shortness of breath, not unlike the same she felt when bearing witness to Jungle Pocket gliding across the finish line. The same she felt when she let out a triumphant roar at the sky each time she won a race.

"We're not... We're not done..."

It wasn't a plea anymore. Growled without an ounce of hesitation. Spoken as if it were a command. An indisputable law of nature.

By now, Pokke's hips were pummeling Tachyon's pelvis into the ground. The floorboards were starting to sound as if they'd buckle beneath them if they kept at it for much longer. Every desperate thrust plunges straight to the hilt, scraping the walls and drilling to the very edges, as if Pokke were intent on claiming the body beneath her as her own.

"Not til' I... say so."

Clumsily sliding along the floor and seeking out something to grab onto, one of Pokke's hands winds up in Tachyon's hair, dredging up a clump of it and yanking her head back, gripping tight against the scalp and holding her there until she'd said her piece. Tachyon's lips remain parted, letting off shallow, dizzying breaths as she fixates on the marvelous, sparkling specimen in front of her.

Surpassing expectations even now. Just when she thought her heart couldn't pound any harder, Pokke would find a way to surpass her limits.

"Not til' I've beaten you... Tachyon..."

Keeping Tachyon's head up, Pokke's forehead dips in close to bump against it, letting every hot pant heat the side of her cheek as she spoke.

"I won't slow down... I won't... take it easy on you..."

A promise kept, as her body gives in completely to desire, seeking out climax as her pistoning hips laid into Tachyon with the kind of force that threatened to leave bruises in their wake.

"Every day... Every goddamn day, I'll make you sweat..."

Again and again, she pumps into Tachyon, as if throwing herself any harder would somehow manage to get her deeper, piercing past pleasure and straight to this miserable little scientist’s heart.

A small puddle had accumulated beneath their legs by now, as did the sweaty imprint of Tachyon’s back arching and unfurling repeatedly against the floor.

It wouldn’t be long now. Pokke knew it, and with the way that her body jolted and shuddered violently, the way her length was desperately pulsating and leaking, Tachyon knew it just as well. But the last thing on Pokke’s mind was acting responsibly.

“Doesn’t matter how long it takes… I’ll wait… F-Forever! Until you’re back out there with me… Tachyon…!”

With her head still dangling and every hot roar against her face making her dizzier, Tachyon remained silent, save for breathless, desperate gasps, struggling to keep up with the sheer power the other exerted over her. Her eyes hold directly on Pokkes as it all happens, half-lidded but never blinking, never leaving for a second.

Just as absurdly strong as Tachyon had theorized her to be.

Just as enduring.

Just as stupid.

…And perhaps twice as attractive as she would have insisted to herself otherwise in her efforts to maintain a purely professional researcher-guinea pig relationship.

Although the drool running over her lip and down her chin was anything but professional at this point, as were her breasts helplessly flopping around atop her rolled-up sweater and her thighs refusing to let go of Pokke’s waist.

No, she probably looked pretty stupid right now, drunk off the passion Jungle Pocket devoted to her. And it was entirely stupid to even consider suddenly nodding along with the other’s demands simply because she’d been fucking her senseless… Right?

“P… Pokke…”

Then again.

“..P-P… Pokke…”

Love was, by definition…

“Pokke…!”

…the kind of surge in emotion that played on one’s capacity to rationalize.

“Don’t… Don’t ever…leave me… Pokke!”

That was all she could take. Tachyon’s desperate cry is met with a tongue crammed in her mouth and Pokke’s cock driven straight to the hilt.

Not so much as an inch of quarter is given as Tachyon’s ankles latch around Pokke’s back. Even a small flex of her ligament like this was a pain of its own, but it was worth it to keep the other there in her embrace for as long as she possibly could.

Her hips quake as Pokke deposits every last ounce of frustration she had straight into Tachyon’s womb, filling it to the brim with the kind of load that only a prized race horse could offer her.

And neither dares to pull away until every drop was spent, until Pokke had finally stopped shuddering and twitching and until Tachyon had to unfurl her tongue from Pokke’s for the sake of being able to breathe.

Both of them limply collapse onto the floor, taking what seemed like an eternity to catch their breaths as the world continued to spin around them.

Seconds passed into minutes. It had been bright out when Jungle Pocket first arrived. By now, the room was tinted in dim reds and oranges, their bodies only illuminated by Tachyon’s laptop still flickering overhead.

Pokke would be the one to disturb the silence first, propping herself up back onto her palms and looking down at her utterly exhausted companion. A look that lingers, trying to read the thoughts behind Tachyon’s weary eyes.

Surprisingly enough, what Pokke expected - an abrupt post-orgasm transformation back into Tachyon’s cold, clinical self - would not come to pass. She looked just the same as she had then. Desperate. Clingy. Scared.

...It was hard not to take a little pride in that. Pokke manages a half-smile.

“...I won’t.”

She spoke simply. Sweetly. Two words, two syllables, yet utterly dripping with the kind of warmth and sweetness that seeped into Tachyon’s chest and sank straight to her core. Sickening, saccharine words that threatened to imbue in her something she despised more than anything.

Hope. For something impossible to happen.

...But of course, she couldn’t let Pokke revel in that too much.

Her eyes shut and she lets out a long, thoughtful hum, finding the strength to start rolling her head from side to side, as if measuring and weighing her own thoughts.

“Good!~” Whatever fleeting glimpse Pokke was given of what lied beyond the event horizon abruptly snapped shut as that shrill tone returned and Tachyon’s hands excitedly clamped the girl’s cheeks.

“You said you’d come every day in your stupor, did you not? I’ll have you know that I am utterly ecstatic to hold you to that.”

“...Eh? T-That’s not what I…”

“You did. You said that. And you’re aaaaaall about not breaking promises, aren’t you?”

“Hey! T-Tachyon!”

Tachyon’s legs rise again, already attempting to cinch around Jungle Pocket’s waist. Her victim attempts to wiggle free to little avail.

“On further consideration, wouldn’t it be vastly more efficient to eliminate the variable of your departure entirely? Keeping you here - on-site - would streamline operations, reduce external risk factors, and ensure consistent access to your capabilities...”

“TACHYON.”

“Cafeeeee?~”

Tachyon’s gloomy roommate pokes in from the hallway on command, as if she’d been lingering there the whole time.

“Mm?”

Naturally, this renders Jungle Pocket wide-eyed and utterly speechless as she looks over her shoulder, slackjawed and still balls deep (and at half-mast ever since Tachyon had insisted on keeping her there) in Tachyon.

“You’ll have to help me start moving your things around! We’re going to have a guest staying with us!~”

…
…
…

“TACHYON!”

“Haah.~”